package org.apache.lucene.search.spans;

/**
 * Copyright 2004 The Apache Software Foundation
 *
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */

import java.io.IOException;

/** Expert: an enumeration of span matches.  Used to implement span searching.
 * Each span represents a range of term positions within a document.  Matches
 * are enumerated in order, by increasing document number, within that by
 * increasing start position and finally by increasing end position. */
public interface Spans {
    /** Move to the next match, returning true iff any such exists. */
    boolean next() throws IOException;

    /** Skips to the first match beyond the current, whose document number is
     * greater than or equal to <i>target</i>. <p>Returns true iff there is such
     * a match.  <p>Behaves as if written: <pre>
     *   boolean skipTo(int target) {
     *     do {
     *       if (!next())
     * 	     return false;
     *     } while (target > doc());
     *     return true;
     *   }
     * </pre>
     * Most implementations are considerably more efficient than that.
     */
    boolean skipTo(int target) throws IOException;

    /** Returns the document number of the current match.  Initially invalid. */
    int doc();

    /** Returns the start position of the current match.  Initially invalid. */
    int start();

    /** Returns the end position of the current match.  Initially invalid. */
    int end();

}
